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WAR 



THE ONLY MEANS OF 



PRESERVING OUR NATIONALITY. 



AN ORATION, 

DELIVERED AT SAN JOSE, SANTA CLARA COUNTY, CAL. 

JULY 4=, 1864, 



GEORGE BARSTOW. 



SAN FRANCISCO: 

PRINTED BY TOWNE & BACON, BOOK AND JOB PRINTERS. 

1864. 






WAR 



THE ONLY MEANS OF 



PRESERVING OUR NATIONALITY. 



AN ORATION, 

DELIVERED AT SAN JOSE, SANTA CLARA COUNTY, CAL. 

JULY 4, 1864, 

BY 

GEORGE BARSTOW. 



SAN FRANCISCO: 

PRINTED BY TOWNE & BACON, BOOK AND JOB PRINTERS. 

1864. 



B4- 



ORATION 



After the example of our fathers, the illustrious founders of the 
Republic, let us turn our thoughts to war, as the only means of 
preserving that liberty 'which was born in '76. 

It is clear that the problem of the rebellion must be solved by 
the sword. It is the patriotic resolve of the people of the United 
States to contend, in spite of every sacrifice, for the maintenance 
of that noble Government which embodies the hopes of the free 
throughout the civilized world. 

Of all the spectacles presented to our view, through the telescope 
of history, there is none so sublime as that of a great nation con- 
tending for its existence, against foes who act upon the atrocious 
maxim that success in villainy is a justification of it. That specta- 
cle is actually presented to our own eyes by this Republic, and 
while thousands are expecting every day to see the national credit 
perch upon the standard of victory, and are disappointed if they do 
not, and are alarmed at the national debt and the fluctuations in the 
currency; and while the timid are beginning to despond, and the 
disaffected to murmur, and even the patriotic to have misgivings, it 
is instructive to turn and see what other nations have done, and 
then by comparing ourselves with them to ask if what man has 
done man may not do. Thus by a view of other nations we shall 
see that this Republic has not put forth a tenth of her strength nor 
a tenth of her endurance ; and that tenfold greater burdens of war 
have been laid upon other nations, and those nations have triumphed 
over them, and renewed their strength like the caglr. 

By the common consent of nations, the United States rank 



as one of the four great powers of the earth ; the other three 
being England, France, and Russia. Let us raise the veil and 
institute a comparison of nations. We shall find that the re- 
sources of a vigorous people are increased by the necessity that 
calls them forth. We shall find that a mighty nation, profoundly 
engaged in the arts of peace, is slow to take on armor, and will be 
uniformly defeated in the beginning of a war, and as uniformly 
successful at last. We may infer that this will be especially so with 
the people of the Northern States, because their works of peace 
have been so grand and so absorbing. But as the contest goes on, 
they will bend at last to war the same energies which have spread 
the triumphs of their commerce from the equator to the poles ; and 
then victory will crown their efforts ; but not in a day, nor a year ; 
for they cannot come out at once from the harvests of peace and 
descend to the harvest of death. They will always be the last to go 
out upon the war path ; but being out, they will not be the first to 
come back. We shall find, also, that whenever a nation is driven 
to the ordeal of battle, if it fails to stand the test, its glories must 
end. Let us see how these positions are supported by history. 

England commenced her great contest with France on the third 
day of February, 1793, thirteen days after the execution of Louis 
XVI, and "closed it on the seventh of July, 1815, when the victo- 
rious armies of the allies, headed by Wellington, entered Paris in 
triumph. They came from the field of Waterloo. Thus, with 
trifling intervals of peace, England waged war twenty-two years. 
It has assumed the name of " the twenty years' war." Every 
student of history knows that during this whole period England 
kept her foes off from her own soil, and was all the time growing 
rich. There is no reason why the same cannot be done in our own 
country. 

But let us see how England multiplied her resources and re- 
doubled her efforts. The year 1793 was the first year of the war, 
and the revenue raised for that year, by tax and loan, was a little 
over twenty-four millions sterling. By land, she had forty-six thou- 
sand men in arms in Europe, and ten thousand in Asia. At sea, 
she had in commission eighty-five ships of the line. The contest 
rolled on, and year by year the power of the nation rose. In 1813, 
after she had been at war over nineteen years, she raised by direct 



taxation twenty millions sterling, by indirect taxation forty millions 
more, and borrowed thirty-nine millions at a fraction over five 
per cent, interest. She had eight hundred thousand men upon 
a war footing in Europe, and two hundred thousand in Asia, and 
they were most of them volunteers. One thousand and three ships of 
war bore the cross of St. George. She had two hundred and thirty- 
one ships of the line in service, and she sent a hundred thousand men 
upon the continent and supported them there, and was all the while 
lending money to her allies. She at the same time kept up her 
sinking fund to over fifteen millions, and expended annually six 
millions for the support of the poor. For convenience of estimat- 
ing in round numbers, we may call a pound sterling, five dollars. 
Multiplying each of these numbers by five and adding all, we get 
with sufficient exactness the stupendous aggregate of these ex- 
penditures. In the first year of the war, they were one hundred 
and twenty millions of dollars, and in the nineteenth, six hundred 
and ninty-five millions, or nearly two millions per day. In 1815, 
two years later, when England nerved herself for a final struggle, 
she showed no sign of exhaustion. Parliament voted that year, to 
the navy eighteen millions sterling, to the army twenty-four millions 
sterling, and for ordnance extraordinary, three millions eight hun- 
dred thousand pounds. With these large sums she supported two 
hundred and seven thousand regular soldiers ; besides, she had 
enrolled eighty thousand militia and three hundred and forty thou- 
sand local militia, in all, six hundred and fifty thousand warriors ; 
and she had in commission fifty-eight ships of the line, the largest 
class of war vessels, besides innumerable smaller ones. She gave 
away that year enormous subsidies to her allies. 



To Russia £3,241,910 

To Austria 1,796,220 

To Prussia 2,382,823 

To Hanover 206,590 

To Spain 147,333 

To Portugal 100,000 

To Sweden 521,061 

To Italy and the Netherlands 78,152 

To the minor powers 1,724,000 

For miscellaneous subsidies 837,134 

In all £11,035,232 



6 

The population of great Britain, at that time, did not exceed 
eighteen millions ; and from this we may see that the people of the 
United States have hardly yet begun to put forth their strength, 
either in men or money. England had her reverses in the field 
and her traitors to contend with at home, as Ave have, and her 
grumblers. In 1804, when she had become the acknowledged 
leader of the allies ; when her expenditures were fifty-three millions 
sterling ; when she had three hundred thousand men in the field ; 
when her naval forces numbered one hundred thousand men, with 
eighty-three ships of the line, and three hundred and forty frigates, 
and this after ten years of strenuous efforts, and when all must 
admit that she was waging war in a manner worthy of her great- 
ness and of her ancient renown ; yet because she sustained great 
reverses in the field, the murmurs of her malcontents became so 
loud that a revolution in politics ensued, as complete as if the Union 
party of the United States should now be defeated at the polls, and 
on the twelfth of May, in that year, the ministry resigned. But 
England went forward with open purse, sword in hand, and tri- 
umphed alike over the disaffected, the traitor, and the foreign foe. 
England, however, entered upon that war under an enormous 
load of preexisting debt. We commenced ours almost free from 
debt. England relied for external revenue upon her commerce 
and her colonial possessions, some of which were profitable and 
others not. We have millions of acres of public land, valuable 
and not yet disposed of. We have undeveloped mines which 
may surpass the riches of Ophir and Havilah. England had 
a population of eighteen millions, and in the loyal States we 
have not much less. England emerged from her long war the 
richest nation in the world, and with the exception perhaps of Rus- 
sia, the most powerful. And when we see that she is more than 
any other a commercial nation, and that during most of this time 
she was excluded from the commerce of the continent by the Ber- 
lin and INIilan decrees, and yet that she fought thus through a 
twenty years' war, in the latter part of which she expended from 
one hundred and ten to one hundred and twenty millions sterling 
annually, and came out victor, we naturally ask how she was 
enabled thus to contend and thus to triumph. By no factitious 
cause, certainly. The real cause is to be found in her industrial 



national character, her free constitution, her long-established habits 
of industry, and her immense natural advantages, commercial and 
manufacturing. These prepared the vast means of producing this 
astonishing result — means which no war could exhaust, so long as 
it was kept off from her own soil. Most of the advantages which 
she had, we also possess ; a Government more free than hers, 
education more general by far, and the same habits of order and 
industry. We have an agriculture vastly greater than hers — com- 
mercial and manufacturing advantages hardly less. If we can 
keep the enemy out of the free States, we can carry on war for 
forty years, and be richer at the close than at the beginning of it ; 
richer not in money alone, but in the development of that noble 
constancy in the government, and that heroic spirit in the people, 
which makes them surmount difficulties and bear burdens which no 
other age or country endured, and which earns the applause of the 
world by pouring out their blood and their wealth in the cause of 
mankind. While I detest the conduct of a portion of the English 
aristocracy in regard to our contest, I honor the prowess and 
patience of the English people through that tremendous conflict ; 
and in all history I find few things more admirable than the calm 
and stubborn resolve of England to conquer or perish. 

Let us now view France, the chief antagonist of England in that 
war. At the outset we are presented with the astonishing fact that 
the levies of French soldiers from 1793 to 1813, amounted to more 
than four millions of men ; and thus they are divided among the 
years : 

1793 1,500,000 

1798 200,000 

1 799 200,000 

1801 30,000 

1805 140,000 

1 806 80,000 

1807 80,000 

1808 240,000 

1809 76,000 

1810 160,000 

1811 1 20,000 

1812 237,000 

1813 1 ,040,000 

Total 4, 103,000 



It is true, that some of these levies did not reach the field. But 
the list of them shows us the amazing efforts by which France 
confronted the giant power which we have just reviewed. To 
meet the expenses of these levies, she resorted to the issue of 
paper money far more freely than we have done. Nor does France 
or the United States differ in this respect from other nations. In 
fact, paper money is the currency of all the wars of modern times. 
The reason is obvious. Sudden calls for provisions, clothing, and 
munitions of war, sweep the treasury empty, and the nation, not 
having the money, substitutes its promises. Like an individual, it 
gives its notes. This is the paper currency of the Government. It 
is the offspring of necessity. France, a not indifferent beholder of 
our struggle, carried on her own entirely with a paper currency. 
On the seventeenth of June, 1790, before a hostile foot had touched 
her soil, she issued eight hundred millions of assignats, the " green- 
backs " of France. In 1794, she had fifteen hundred millions 
afloat, and they were worth but ten cents on the dollar. She at 
that time subsisted six hundred and thirty-six thousand non-com- 
batants by rations at the public expense. In 1792, her war tax 
was graduated so as to produce to the treasury forty millions ster- 
ling, or two hundred millions of dollars. She had in 1794, four- 
teen armies in the field, and the expenses of the war had risen to 
forty millions of dollars per month, which is one-and-one-third mill- 
ions per day, about the same as our own. The only way for 
the French Government to make headway against these expenses 
was to issue paper money, and the only basis for it was the confis- 
cated property of the realm, which amounted to thirty-five hundred 
millions of dollars, and consisted of houses, lands, and movables. 
The paper had a forced circulation, being payable everywhere, to 
the Government as well as for it. Towards the close of the year, 
it sunk to eight-and-one-third cents on the dollar, and the timid sup- 
posed that national bankruptcy was impending. At that time, 
however, the victorious banner of Napoleon suddenly appearing on 
the eastern slopes of the Alps, enabled the French Government to 
adopt the policy of making war support war, and from that time 
France began to live upon her enemies. If we ever obtain from 
victory the power to carry into effect that vigorous system of war- 
fare, as soon as it is commmenced, we shall be met with a cry from 



9 

the Copperheads that it is unconstitutional. But let us not turn 
aside from the direct course. Constitutions are instruments made 
for times of peace. In war they are suspended, from the necessity 
of the case, when they interfere with those military operations 
which are carried on for their preservation ; and when you hear a 
man talk of constitutional impediments to the prosecution of this 
war, you may know that he is a constitutional villain, and if he does 
not betray his country it will be for want of an opportunity. 

Let us now look at Russia. The first great enemy that the Rus- 
sians encountered in war was the Swedes under Charles XII. In 
a series of battles the Russians were defeated and greatly discour- 
aged. But as they gained in discipline daily, the tide turned at 
last, and they wound up the contest on the field of Pultowa by the 
total overthrow of the Swedes and the firm establishment of the 
Muscovite empire. This was in the year 1700. Let us look at 
Russia in 1812. In that year Napoleon invaded her at the head 
of four hundred and fifty thousand men. Never had modern Eu- 
rope seen such an army, or war on so gigantic a scale. The sabres 
of forty thousand dragoons met each other and clashed, on the 
battle field of Smolensko. At Borodino, all along the front of 
Bagrations' line, there rose a breastwork of the dead and dying. 
The conqueror, however, entered Moscow. Yet this tide of disas- 
ter was so entirely reversed that the French were driven from Mos- 
cow, and the Cossacks entered Paris. This was not because of the 
snows of Russia. That it was, is the common opinion, but it is erro- 
neous. It was because the Russians showed in their very defeats 
the elements of final success. It was persevering, determined valor, 
gaining in discipline every day, and showing in this, as in every 
other case, that an uncorrupted nation suddenly called to arms, is 
certain to be defeated in the first battles and equally certain to win 
at last. 

Go back to Hannibal and the Carthaginians. Mark that series of 
victories which he gained over the Romans, from the day he crossed 
the Alps till he encamped within sight of Rome ; the conquering 
Romans losing every battle. Yet this tide was so completely turned 
that Hannibal was driven out of Italy ; the Carthaginians were 
everywhere routed, and the Roman general closed the campaign 
with a battle in which he took twenty thousand prisoners and left 



10 

twenty thousand more of the enemies of Rome dead on the field. 
From that day Carthage was doomed. But I will not multiply illus- 
trations. The counterparts of Manassas, Great Bethel, Lexington, 
Leesburg, Fredericksburg, and Petersburg, are found in the history 
of every warlike nation of ancient or modern times. France, impet- 
uously gallant, has had many of them. England, the most cautious 
and firm of warlike nations, has more than one instance in point. 
Venice, Macedonia, and Turkey, are not wanting in them. 

A single defeat in a pitched battle, or even a series of them, 
forms no basis for a conclusion as to how great is the capacity of a 
nation for war. Russia never appeared so great as on the morn- 
ing when fifteen thousand of her people lay bleeding on the field 
of Borodino. Rising from defeat, as the embodied spirit of patri- 
otism, she seized the torch with her own hands, and made her 
capital a sea of fire. From that hour it was apparent that Russia 
was invincible. Did Athens ever appear so great as at the 
moment when her vales were drenched in blood, her fields desola- 
ted, consternation brooding over her citizens, and her last resource 
the ships of her merchants ? It was then that the invincible valor 
of her people, bursting forth like the day spring from on high, dealt 
the Persian empire a blow under which it reeled and fell. Was it 
not after the terrible disaster of Cannae, which brought destruction 
to the very gates of Rome, that the still uncorrupted Roman roused 
himself like a giant from sleep and blotted out Carthage ? If any 
man thinks that courage and endurance will not preserve this 
nation, let him correct his impressions from the storehouse of history. 
There he will find, not only that the great sacrifices which courage 
and endurance impel a nation to make for its life, have been suc- 
cessful, but that they have always been worth all that they cost. 
So it will be with us. Ultimately, too, if we are true to ourselves, 
some general will arise, or perhaps has already appeared, capable of 
pointing out to our brave battalions the road to victory, and of 
leading the way. Let us not despair of the Republic. It is well 
with a nation when it can be said of it with truth, that its first 
efforts in a war were its least successful ones. 

Looking back over the history of the world, we find that a time 
has come to almost every nation, when it had to be put to the wager 
of battle, as a test of its power to maintain itself in arms. Greece 



11 

was put to this test successively at Marathon, at Thermopylae, and 
at Platea. On each occasion she stood the test, and her glory and 
power went on increasing. But after a period of debasement, she 
was again put to the test at Cherronaea, and failed ; and after that 
her history is a case of melancholy decline. Rome was put to the 
same test on a score of bloody fields, and as long as she met it 
successfully, she remained mistress of the world. But the day came 
when she was put to trial by the same ordeal in the first Gothic 
invasion, and she could not stand the test ; and so history has 
recorded the decline and fall of the Roman empire. Venice exerted 
the same power at first ; and became, in name and in fact, the 
queen of the Adriatic. But she afterwards failed to exert it at 
Constantinople, and was overthrown by the Turks whom she de- 
spised. It makes no difference to the nation being tried, whether 
her enemies are from within or without. It is all the same to 
us whether a hundred thousand men in arms have landed on our 
shores from abroad, or a hundred thousand have gathered from the 
dismal swamps of the South. In either case, there is a foe to be 
vanquished, or to vanquish us. 

The only condition upon which a nation like ours can exist is, that 
it possesses and will exert the force necessary to crush any force 
that can be brought against it, from within or without. This is the 
simple proposition which must be made good in arms, in order for 
the existence of any government. The nation that cannot do this, 
will be extinguished so soon as the great powers make up their 
minds that the farce of its nationality had better be considered as 
" played out." Such will be our position, unless we can crush the 
Confederacy by force. If, after the repulses we have sustained, 
we settle up the controversy, the world will see — and what is worse, 
it will be true — that we receded from the contest through fear 
of the result ; through distrust of our ability to destroy our ene- 
mies and repeople their section, which all must see that it is our 
true policy to do, if we can. Then the word will pass from lip to 
lip among the nations, that this people of the United States, so 
boastful and so free — this people that has assumed to be the regen- 
erator of the world, could not quell a conspiracy of its own malcon- 
tents at home. How long after that can we exist ? Only so much 
time as is necessary for our riches to tempt the cupidity of some pow- 



12 

erful nation. Our remaining history will be like the history of Car- 
thage after the battle of Zama, or of Athens after the battle of 
Syracuse, or of Greece, taken as a whole, after the battle of Chero- 
nsea, or of Rome after the first Gothic invasion, — a succession of 
dying throes and shortening gasps, the pulse of national life growing 
fainter and fainter, till it ceases to beat. Then we, who have glo- 
ried in the symbol of the eagle, shall be like the eagle struck in 
mid air by a fatal dart. That he is to fall and die, is certain. The 
only question is, how long he will quiver upon his pinions — with 
what writhings he will descend from the skies, and to how much of 
agony and humiliation the proud bird will be subjected, before he 
stretches himself upon the plain and expires. 

The military disasters which we have met with in the last three 
years, find their counterpart in every modern nation capable of con- 
ducting war on a great scale. France, with a population of thirty 
millions, fought through the campaigns of 1791, '92, and '93 with a 
series of the most disheartening defeats. In 1792, she took the 
field with four armies, amounting in the aggregate to 193,000 men. 
In the north, Rochambeau was at the head of forty thousand 
infantry and eight thousand cavalry. In the center, La Fayette 
was stationed with forty-five thousand infantry and seven thousand 
cavalry. In the east, Luckner with thirty-five thousand infantry 
rested upon the Rhine ; and in the south, Montesquieu, with fifty 
thousand men, stretched his line along the Pyrenees and the Rhone. 
These armies were the offspring of national enthusiasm, and were 
all unsuccessful. Lafayette was surprised and defeated at Mau- 
beuge. Luckner, after a severe check, was driven back to the 
frontier. Rochambeau and Montesquieu were alike unfortunate, 
not from the cowardice of the men ; for afterwards, when they had 
a General to lead them, they became the heroes of Austcrlitz, Wa- 
gram, and Marengo. As if to fill the cup of national woe to overflow- 
ing, the dreadful insurrection of La Vendee then broke out, which 
was not suppressed till torrents of blood flowed, and one of the most 
flourishing cities of France was laid in ruins. In 1794, the fourth 
year of the war, all was changed ; and that campaign was the most 
memorable in her annals. During all this time, France had been 
looking for a general. That year, she found one in the person of 
Napoleon Bonaparte. She had lacked unanimity among her people. 



13 

That year she found it. She had been in want of munitions of 
war; her treasury empty, her hospitals filled. That year the star 
of Napoleon rose upon the troubled night of disaster, and brought 
back victory to her banner ; and then her armies were supplied 
from the districts which they conquered. 

There is not a perfect parallel between France and ourselves, for 
the first three years of these two wars, because the Generals of the 
Federal forces have not always been unsuccessful. Some of them 
have gained important advantages. Some have won victories. But 
long ere this the war would have closed, had it not been for the 
political party at the North, which is led by such men as the Sey- 
mours and the Woods. They are fully identified with the traitors 
of the South. They know that if the nation succeeds in the war, 
they are politically dead. But if defeat or base compromise brings 
peace, they hope to be able, with the help of their Southern allies, 
to revive again the power of the pro-slavery democracy. Hence, 
with fiendish ingenuity they plot for the defeat of the Union armies. 
They have spies in all the Federal camps, and the evident readi- 
ness of our foes to meet almost every military movement which we 
have made, shows that they have been apprised of them in advance. 
The Northern Copperheads have given them the information. Their 
hopes of power and plunder are founded upon national calamity and 
disgrace. To effect their infamous schemes, they resort to every 
subterfuge which the most devilish art can devise. To under- 
mine the faith of the people in the solvency of their Government, 
they point to the national debt, and proclaim that the abyss of 
national bankruptcy is opening before us. Let us look into it, then. 
The nation owes to day seventeen hundred and fifty millions of dol- 
lars. But we estimate the financial condition of a man not alone 
by what he owes, but also by what he has to pay it with, and by 
what he receives and expends. One man may be poor, and owe 
nothing. Another may owe thousands, and yet be rich. The same 
is true of nations. If we should hear that Norway had borrowed 
fifty millions, we should say, that nation has shouldered a heavy 
load. But when Russia borrows fifty millions, it is a mere baga- 
telle, because she has vast tracts of new land, and boundless re- 
sources. She has a great agriculture, and a growing commerce. 
She has risen to a very high pitch of prosperity and grandeur. She 



14 

is every clay subduing the forest, and building steamships and rail- 
roads. Though populous in some sections, she is more towering in 
point of area than in numbers. In fact, she is a country essentially 
the same as our own — young, strong, and growing. She has a 
population of seventy-three millions, on an area of eight and one- 
third millions of square miles. Like us, she has a long seaboard, 
extending, by sea and ocean, more than twenty-five thousand miles — 
a distance equal to the circumference of the earth. Her land fron- 
tier is over nine thousand miles long. The greatest length of the 
empire is nine thousand six hundred and eighty-one miles, and 
the greatest breadth is two thousand six hundred and twenty- 
eight miles. Like us, her increase has been rapid. She did not 
emerge from barbarism till late in the seventeenth century ; and in 
1722, we find her population was fourteen millions ; in 1815, forty- 
five millions ; in 1825, fifty-five millions ; in 1851, sixty-four mil- 
lions ; and now, in 1864, it is seventy-three millions. 

What is a debt of seventeen hundred and fifty millions of dollars 
to a nation like the Russians, with such an area, and such resources ? 
It would make Switzerland or Sweden insolvent ; but it would be 
nothing to Russia ; and it will not sink the American Union. A 
careful estimate, based upon previous growth, shows that in 1870 
the taxable property of the Atlantic, Middle, and Western States, 
will amount to thirty-five thousand millions of dollars ; and in 1880 
it will reach the enormous aggregate of eighty thousand millions. 
Thus, for seventeen hundred and fifty millions, which the nation 
owes to-day, she will have eighty thousand millions to pay it with, 
sixteen years from this time. An estimate of the increase of popu- 
lation, not less carefully made, shows that in the year 1880, the 
population of the same States will be fifty-six millions ; so that the 
national debt of to-day, provided it docs not increase, will rest in 
1880 upon the shoulders of fifty-six millions of people, worth eighty 
thousand millions of dollars, and it can be paid without taxing the 
people at large up to the rate of taxation in San Francisco for the 
present fiscal year. 

The unthinking and- the pusillanimous are startled by the figures 
which the reptile Copperheads of the North arrange before their 
eyes, to alarm the avarice of misers, and shake the public credit. 
But an examination of reliable data, shows the unbounded ability 



15 

of the nation to meet all her liabilities, and to emerge from this 
war, even if it should last twenty years, one of the richest nations 
in the world. In view of the powerful navy, evoked by this con- 
test, it is not an absurd conjecture, that at its close it will give to 
American merchants the lead in the world's commerce, and make 
New York to be what London has been, the center of the wealth 
of the globe. It is a memorable fact that in twenty-five years 
after the close of the twenty years' war, Great Britain trebled her 
exports, doubled her tunnage, and increased her population by 
millions. The resources of vigorous nations are developed with 
redoubled rapidity, by necessity. They increase with the demand 
for them ; and I assert, unhesitatingly, that if we can keep the foe 
out of the free States, we can fight for forty years, and be richer 
at the close than at the commencement of the war ; and if the 
flower of the young men could reappear ; if to the desolate homes 
of the North the loved and lost could return ; if the wounds and 
woes, which the fiends of the Confederacy have inflicted upon the 
people, could be healed, the nation could afford to laugh at the 
bugbear of national bankruptcy. It is a fit emanation from the 
poisonous, rancorous reptiles of the North, who have taken the 
appropriate name of Copperheads. The debt that we owe, though 
large, is chiefly due to our own people, and it gives every creditor 
of the Republic a direct interest in its preservation. I am not 
seeking to show that a national debt is a national blessing ; but only 
that, if the calamity of indebtedness must come upon us, for the 
national preservation, the country is able to pay it. Nor do I seek 
to show that it was a blessing to France to issue millions upon mil- 
lions of assignats, nor that their depreciation was a benefit. On 
the contrary, the result of all this was an evil ; but as a choice 
between that and the greater evil of national annihilation, I believe 
that the nation acted wisely ; and so also this nation is acting 
wisely, though many private fortunes here, as there, will be ruined. 
For the soldier of the Confederacy, who shoulders his musket 
and fights — for the southern-born secessionist, who hates us with- 
out knowing us, and wants to kill us because we want to save the 
Union, bad as his cause is, I can make some allowance. But for 
the miserable Judas of the North — the monster, whose heart is with 
the enemies of his country — the viper who was reared in a land of 



16 

freedom, and yet is false to freedom — the degraded and spiritless 
wretch, in whose frozen bosom burns no love for his own native 
land — no pride in her traditions and history — no memories, nor 
attachments — no fond and proud associations which make him feel 
that he has a country — no feeling of common cause with those who 
are bleeding and dying for the old fatherland — will the time never 
come when such detestable felons can be brought to the gallows ? 
0, if I had the power to do what I have the will to do, I would 
hang all traitors ; but the Northern traitor should hang the high- 
est and the first. 

There are writers who inform us that the dog is the natural ser- 
vant of man, because when found wild on the central plains of Asia, 
if he chance to encounter a man, he comes crouching at his feet, 
and fawns, and affectionately licks his hand, in token of his acknowl- 
edgment that man is his master. In the same way the Copper- 
head of the North is the natural servant of the slave power. 
Wherever he finds it, he crouches and fawns before it, like the dog 
before his master. 

The secessionist is the political brigand of the country. He is 
false to the Union, and he makes no other profession. But the 
Northern Copperhead, who talks of peace and humanity, is false 
to it, whatever may be his professions ; and there are so many ex- 
cuses arising from education, habits, and birth, that I esteem the 
secessionist almost a saint, compared with the Northern Copperhead 
— the loathsome scavenger of the Southern Confederacy. 



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